For the Record, Friday, April 10, 2026

For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, publications and honors include the following:

Presentations

Farley Grubb, professor of economics, presented his research on "How the American Revolution was Financed with Paper Money" in a webinar to the Foundation for Teaching Economics, Davis, California, on April 8, 2026.

Publications

Two UD faculty have collaborated on a new publication focused on AI in biomedicine. Cathy Wu, Unidel Edward G. Jefferson Chair in Engineering and director of the Data Science Institute (DSI), and Tom Powers, associate professor of philosophy and in the Biden School, and director of the Center for Science, Ethics and Public Policy, are coauthors on "Desiderata for a biomedical knowledge network: opportunities, challenges and future directions," which recently appeared in the journal Bioinformatics Advances, published jointly by Oxford University Press and the International Society for Computational Biology. This publication was a result of a 2025 NIH Workshop "Exploring the Applications of Knowledge Networks in Biomedical and Behavioral Research," which was organized by professors Wu and Powers and their coauthors.

Kai Marshall Green, assistant professor of Africana studies, is the author of a new book, A Body Made Home: They Black Trans Love, published by The Feminist Press. A reviewer in the online magazine Autostraddle wrote, "A powerful exploration of the body, trauma, and transformation, A Body Made Home invites readers to love ourselves as a practice of community building, and, following Green's example, to embrace the 'perpetual be&unbecoming' in the stories of our lives."

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor emeritus of theatre and dance, reviewed in Lumina Lina (New York, April-June, No.2, 2026) the recent poetry book of the Romanian-American theologue Theo Damian, Cuvânt însetat de tăcere / Words longing for silence (English translation by Lidia Vianu, adviser Anne Steart, Eikon, Bucharest, 2025). Damian's poetic achievement lies in his confident handling of Christian values for today's spiritual destiny. His profound knowledge and unerring persuasiveness bring the stories and myths of Western identity back into the reader's consciousness. The poems refer to the legendary actions and attitudes of Mary of Egypt (born around 344 in Alexandria, died around 421 or 430 near Jericho), the early Christian hermit, venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. Damian brings the presence of the meaning and forms of this legend to poetic reflection.

Honors

Faculty in the Department of History have been awarded prizes for recent publications. David Suisman, professor of history, received the Greg Tate Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Book Award for his book Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers. Print Markets and Political Dissent: Publishers in Central Europe, 1800-1870 by James Brophy, Francis H. Squire Professor of History, won the Hans Rosenberg Prize of the Central European History Society for the best book in German history and the Barclay Book Prize of the German Studies Association for the best monograph in 19th- and 20th-century German history. A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I by Polly Zavadivker, associate professor of history, won the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award.

Lauren Covington, assistant professor of nursing, was accepted into the inaugural cohort of the Scholars for Applied Research and Innovation (SARI) program, funded through the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Nursing Research (NINR). The yearlong fellowship is designed to advance rigorous, equity-focused research and innovation in nursing and health sciences, with a focus on maximizing the impact on systemic and institutional factors that affect the health of communities across the lifespan. Covington's research will focus on adequately measuring and intervening upon structural and institutional factors that affect sleep-related mortality among Black infants. The fellowship is a cross-institution collaboration based at Villanova University's M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing and led in partnership with Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Howard University College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences.

Greg Shelnutt, professor of art and design, has had two sculptures, Conjoined Succor and Homestead, selected for the America 250: Craft Today exhibition at the Touchstone Center for Crafts in Farmington, Pennsylvania. The exhibition runs from May 9 through July 25, 2026, in the Bea Campbell Gallery. This programing is a part of Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, presented by Craft in America. These works were made possible with support from the Vermont Studio Center and a University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences GO! Grant. Shelnutt also was awarded a 2026-2027 four-week Maker-Creator Fellowship by the Winterthur Museum's Research Fellowship Program. His project is entitled: "The Forms of Labor: Care, Craft and Physical Making at Winterthur (How the Acts of Fabrication, Preservation, Presentation and Repair May Inform the Artistic Practice)."

Sharon Dudley-Brown, professor of nursing, received the Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Award for Clinical Excellence from the American College of Gastroenterology. The award recognizes a distinguished nurse practitioner or physician assistant who has shown longstanding contributions to advancing clinical practice in the field of gastroenterology and hepatology. Dudley-Brown is recognized for her research on patients with inflammatory bowel disease, her leadership, mentoring and collaborative activities, which have made a lasting impact on state, regional, national and international levels.

Ashley Cooke, an honors senior nursing major, won third place for her poster presentation at the Eastern Nursing Research Society's (ENRS) 38th annual Scientific Sessions in Boston in March. Her poster, "Wide Awake in Delaware: Why Social Determinants Matter for Young Adult Sleep," in the bachelor of science in nursing category, presented preliminary findings from her honors thesis project. Cooke worked with mentor Lauren Covington, assistant professor of nursing, on research that found that young adults in Delaware experienced poor sleep health and that social determinants of health, including insurance and employment status, were correlated with sleep patterns.

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